"I will give it back presently, Rima," he said. "Let me first
smoke a cigarette--and then another."
It seemed probable from this that the good old man had already
been casting covetous eyes on my property, and that his
granddaughter had taken care of it for me. But how the silent,
demure girl had kept it from him was a puzzle, so intensely did
he seem now to enjoy it, drawing the smoke vigorously into his
lungs and, after keeping it ten or fifteen seconds there, letting
it fly out again from mouth and nose in blue jets and clouds.
His face softened visibly, he became more and more genial and
loquacious, and asked me how I came to be in that solitary place.
I told him that I was staying with the Indian Runi, his
neighbour.
"But, senor," he said, "if it is not an impertinence, how is it
that a young man of so distinguished an appearance as yourself, a
Venezuelan, should be residing with these children of the devil?"
"You love not your neighbours, then?"
"I know them, sir--how should I love them?" He was rolling up
his second or third cigarette by this time, and I could not help
noticing that he took a great deal more tobacco than he required
in his fingers, and that the surplus on each occasion was
conveyed to some secret receptacle among his rags.
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